Tools

Meta

Unused Social Elements of Youtube

November 3, 2008 — dfgiangi

As a group, we utilized a questionnaire to ask students questions relating to their use of the popular video-sharing website, Youtube. One important insight that we gained through our research was that only a slight percentage of Youtube users actually utilize the social features offered through use of the website.We concluded that there are two main reasons that this is the case. The first explanation is that users simply have no interest in connecting socially with other users, the other reason being that users are unaware that these social features even exist. For the context of this assignment we will draw on the concept that users are unaware of Youtube’scommunity elements.

Based on our research, 100% of the students surveyed said that they did not participate socially when using Youtube. Since our sample size wasn’t exceedingly large, we can safely assume that this is not the case with everyone. It still, however, presents that fact that the majority of users are not utilizing the website to its fullest potential. One solution to this problem would be to place greater emphasis on the community features located on Youtube’s main page. After analyzing the website, there is clearly a “Community” tab located at the top of the page, but since most users’ initial focus goes directly to the search bar, these tabs are often overlooked. In order to explore this issue more in depth, we could create a separate questionnaire directed at users’ knowledge of social features provided through the website. As a group, we believe that by increasing advertisement of the community aspects of Youtube, more users would utilize these elements and, in turn, gain an enhanced social experience while engaging with the site.